Art
With Impact!
(From http://www.epica-awards.com/)
The 2003 print Epica
d'Or award was won by 180 Amsterdam's press and outdoor campaign
"Impact" for adidas international in support of the Rugby World Cup
2003.
Graphic Designer and
Art Director Stuart Brown joined 180 Amsterdam in September 2001. Stuart, a
keen rugby fan and ex-player himself, received the brief which basically asked
how adidas could make an impact during the upcoming Rugby World Cup. 180 took
that quite literally and Stuart started experimenting on how to visualise the
collision between 2 rugby players. He came up with the idea of covering players
with paint and getting them to charge canvas-wrapped tackle-bags.
In a friend's
apartment the first attempt involved using poster-paint with a rolled up
mattress serving as a tackle-bag. Not hindered by the ins and outs of body
painting, they never thought of using a barrier cream to protect their skin.
Stuart Brown says: "Two hours of scrubbing under the shower was followed
by two days of migraines and the conclusion that poster paint is pretty
toxic."
For the second test
they enlisted the cooperation of an agency intern who got covered in acrylic paint,
which resulted in an inner-ear infection. They did get it right in the end
using Vaseline as barrier cream together with proper body paint and this technique
was used when the world's best rugby players gathered in a fully equipped
photography studio in London to make their self-portraits.
An additional
portrait session was organized in Auckland, New Zealand at the request of the
entire New Zealand All Blacks team. This time instead of individual portraits a
35 meter canvas was made with the impressions of 30 All Black players, which
was then exhibited in Auckland's airport throughout the Rugby World Cup.
The original
impressions on canvas, were exhibited to the public in Dublin's Guinness
Storehouse and later travelled to New Zealand. These canvases of and by 14 of
the world's elite rugby players were then turned into 14 different print and
outdoor posters. Each execution focuses on a different insight or aspect of the
player's performance, which a true fan, teammate or opposing player would
recognize and respect.
The entire 'making
of' the canvases was filmed by 180 and turned into TV commercials, which ran on
TV stations that broadcasted the World Cup Rugby matches.
New Zealand All
Blacks player Kees Meeuws said: 'Basically you are leaving your imprint, like a
fingerprint. It shows that rugby is a contact sport and that when you do get
hit, you definitely feel it'.
180 Amsterdam's
Executive Creative Director Peter McHugh concludes: "It's not an ad that
talks at you - it's an art exhibit that becomes advertising. It comes at people
from a place they don't recognize as advertising.
The adidas
"Impact" campaign won the first Epica d'Or for print advertising in a
final run-off against the PlayStation "Supermarket" ad by TBWA\Paris.
It marked the second time that 180 Amsterdam has won Epica's top honours with
its work for adidas.
DESIGNED FOR IMPACT by Patrick Burgoyne
Talk
about suffering for your art: when 180 art director Stuart Brown had an idea
for an adidas rugby campaign, he decided to test it out at home first. So, he
covered himself in black poster paint, wrapped his mattress in cellophane,
stuck on a sheet of paper and charged. "The results were pretty good but I
had a migraine for a day and it took two weeks to get the paint off," he
remembers.
Nevertheless,
Brown's efforts persuaded the client to go for an idea, which has ended up
winning this year's Epica d'Or for print. "Adidas asked us how they could
make an impact during the Rugby World Cup - we took that brief quite
literally," remembers Alex Melvin, partner and head of strategic planning
at the Amsterdam-based agency. Like most other sports brands, adidas is often
seen as a company that just make shoes you can do sport in. But, Melvin
believes, the truth is that they're more of a multi-specialist. "They've
been involved in hundreds of sports at highly technical levels," he says.
"So we were quite keen to drill down a little bit deeper knowing that as a
brand they're inside the sport working with players: they'll develop different
boots for forwards and for backs, different shirts depending on the player and
his position. We wanted to do really impactful stuff but also be insightful of
the game, demonstrating that this brand is one that understands the players and
their capabilities."
The
resulting concept was to cover adidas-sponsored players in paint and ask them
to hurl themselves at white canvases. Hopefully, the resulting marks would
convey the power of the game and its athletes, putting the viewer in the midst
of the action. These images would then form the artwork for the brand's major
campaign around the tournament.
Having
convinced the client, 180 then had to persuade 15 of the world's top rugby
players to have themselves covered head to foot in paint. Eventually, they
managed to gather the whole of the New Zealand All Blacks team, plus assorted
adidas-sponsored players from other countries, in a studio near Wimbledon dog
track in London. The players were covered in Vaseline and a special body paint,
then given ear plugs (another of 180's "testers" had unfortunately
developed an ear infection during the early trials). They were then asked to
run at, dive on and tackle canvases held by team-mates.
"What
we really wanted to know was, when you get two huge guys, and they go 'whack!'
what does that feel like?" says Brown. "This was a way of recording
the moment but also the scale of the impact as well." The agency also got
the players to adopt a particular move or position which they were associated
with. When the English players got their turn for the campaign, Martin Johnson
jumped against a canvas as if catching a ball in a line-out while Jonny
Wilkinson went for a mid-stride profile as if just about to kick the ball for a
conversion. "There's a few of Jonah Lomu doing his classic hand-off
move," adds Brown, who was impressed with the way the session brought out
the artistic side in the All Black star. "Kees Meeuws and Jonah were
telling us that they were both going to do foundation courses at art
college," says Brown. "Kees actually went and did it while Jonah left
to go and play rugby. Kees was directing Jonah and we just stood back and
watched the two of them get on with it."
Peter
McHugh, partner and executive creative director on the campaign, believes that
this close relationship that the players had with one another was one reason
why the campaign came out so well. "They were all very cooperative with
each other and you can see it in what we made. People get to a certain level at
something and they all appreciate what each other does. They wanted to make the
most dramatic prints they could." Extra details on the player's faces were
obtained from stock footage and subtly added in post to strengthen the images.
And
what originally began as a poster campaign grew organically to include TV
commercials, giant bus wraps, a calendar and, something the team were
particularly excited about, a touring exhibition entitled Impact: The Art of
Rugby with an accompanying art book to be published in the UK, Australia
and New Zealand.
"We
tried to tap into a particular aspect of each player's performance that the
knowledgeable fan would respect about them," says McHugh. "What it
was about the player that's unique or special. Some are truisms about rugby,
while some just acknowledge the fact that this is not a person that you want to
get in the way of."
The finished
work is an innovative spin on the tired world of the sports celebrity
endorsement: in this case each athlete was actively involved, donating their
own image as a unique self-portrait. It was that rare thing in advertising - a
generally original concept that perfectly matched the brand and really
connected with consumers. A campaign with real impact, you might say.
Patrick
Burgoyne is the editor of Creative Review.
